March 15, 2019

Students go on strike today for climate change, inspired by young Swedish climate warrior (and now Nobel Peace prize nominee) Greta Thunberg, 15, who last year launched a climate strike alone, skipping school and sitting outside the Swedish Parliament protesting against the lack of action about climate change. Her strike sparked the #FridaysforFuture people's movement and millions of students are joining her today. There are going to be strikes and events in more than 70 countries and over 700 locations, but the aim is the same - overcome indifference, spread awareness and demand politicians urgent policy changes to stop climate change.

These young students are extremely inspiring (and hopefully their slogans, banners and passion will not be appropriated by high street retailers hoping to produce more quick selling polluting T-shirts...), but in turn art can inspire all of us to ponder more about our planet.

At the moment for example there is a very inspiring monumental installation in the Oval Gallery of Lisbon's Museum of Art, Architecture and Technology (MAAT) by Paris-based Japanese artist Tadashi Kawamata, known for his large scale sustainable architectural environments.

The installation, curated by MAAT director Pedro Gadanho and curator Marta Jecu, is entitled "Over Flow" (until 1st April) and it is made using waste, plastic residues and abandoned boats collected on Portugal's shores during beach cleaning campaigns by volunteer organisation Brigada do Mar, Almada City Hall and the Fishing Port of Nazaré (in 10 years Brigada do Mar collected roughly 450 tonnes of rubbish from beaches, so they sadly had a lot of materials to use).

The installation looks frozen in space and time: a net suspended from the ceiling is filled with all sorts of ocean debris, from plastic bottles to polystyrene boxes, while two boats lie abandoned on the floor of the main museum gallery, giving the impression they were submerged by this wave of trash. Visitors stepping into the gallery are confronted therefore by the aftermath of an ecological catastrophe, a seascape of waste, floating and engulfing civilisation.

Kawamata developed the idea for the installation during one year of research and field work in Portugal that culminated in a workshop with the group Os Espacialistas, a collective mainly working between art and architecture.

While the installation doesn't feature traditional sculptures, it is sculptural and architectural: the waste materials form indeed a sort of wave, recreating the perpetual movements of the ocean, but also putting us in front of our terrible consumption habits.

The effect is overwhelming, moving and very scary at the same time and it is set to make visitors ponder about parallelisms between nature and human beings: the sea can indeed destroy us with a tsunami, but, in the last few decades, we have in turn destroyed the sea.

Kawamata also invites visitors to consider the history behind these materials that floated on the water or were abandoned on the beach not just for days, weeks or months but years, they therefore have a history and represent a form of modern archaeology and human memory.

Last but not least, since the museum overlooks the sea, the installation is symbolic, calling to mind a wave that has maybe crashed into the museum, invading its spaces.

"Over Flow" is a fictional environmental disaster, but it will hopefully push visitors seeing the installation in person (and turning in this case into fictional disaster tourists...) or via images on the Internet, to ponder more about the devastating effects of pollution and ocean debris and think more about the disastrous possibility of losing our beloved oceans and beaches, together with our future. What's in Tadashi Kawamata's future instead? Probably another monumental immersive installation, and next time we hope it will be about the destructive power of fashion waste, pollution and consumption.